Below deck: a bewildered young girl trains as a dishwasher sent to work by her peasant family, who is on the verge of relocation from the encroaching floodwaters. With a humanist gaze and wry wit Chang’s Upstairs Downstairs approach captures the microcosmic society of the luxury liner. Chinese-Canadian director Yung Chang returns to the gorgeous, now-disappearing landscape of his grandfather’s youth to trace the surreal life of a “farewell cruise” that traverses the gargantuan waterway. In China, it is simply known as 'The River.' But the Yangtze-and all of the life that surrounds it-is undergoing an astonishing transformation wrought by the largest hydroelectric project in history, the Three Gorges Dam. Last Train Home’s intimate observation of one fractured family sheds light on the human cost of China’s ascendance as an economic superpower. Emotionally engaging and starkly beautiful, Their daughter Qin-now a restless and rebellious teenager-both bitterly resents their absence and longs for her own freedom away from school, much to the utter devastation of her parents. Like so many of China’s rural poor, Zhang Changhua and Chen Suqin left behind their two infant children for grueling factory jobs.
Working over several years in classic verité style Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Lixin Fan (with the producers of the award-winning hit documentary Up the Yangtze) travels with one couple who have embarked on this annual trek forĪlmost two decades. This mass exodus is the world’s largest human migration-an epic spectacle that reveals a country tragically caught between its rural past and industrial future. Every spring, China’s cities are plunged into chaos as 130 million migrant workers journey to their home villages for the New Year’s holiday.
0 kommentar(er)
